In recent years, in the photographic industry, there have been the demands for silver halide photographic light-sensitive materials which are excellent in image quality and can be rapidly processed.
Usually, in the development of silver halide photographic light-sensitive materials, a number of the light-sensitive materials are continuously processed with an automatic processor installed at each photofinishing laboratory. On the other hand, as one of the improvements of customer service, the same day service has been demanded and, recently, the service within several hours from the receipt of photofinishing orders has further been demanded. Thus, the rapid processing is getting indispensable day by day. Also, the developments of rapid processing have been urgently demanded from the viewpoints that the shortening of processing time leads to the improvement of service efficiency and the processing cost can be reduced.
Accordingly, various approaches to the achievement of rapid processing have been made from the two aspects of light-sensitive materials and processing liquids. Namely, in color developing processes, there have been known that the attempts of making higher a temperature, pH, concentration of color developing agents or the like have been made and additives such as a development accelerator and the like have been added in the color processing processes. Such development accelerators include 1-phenyl-3-pyrazolidone described in British Pat. No. 811,185, N-methyl-p-aminophenol described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,417,514, N,N,N',N'-tetramethyl-p-phenylenediamine described in Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection (hereinafter referred to as Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication) No. 15554-1975 and so forth. In these methods, however, any satisfactory rapid-processability has not been achieved, but such a performance deterioration as fog increase and so forth has mostly been induced.
On the other hand, in the silver halide emulsions used in light-sensitive materials, it has been known that the configurations, sizes and compositions of silver halide grains and, particularly, the composition of silver halides greatly influences the development rates of the light-sensitive materials and so forth. It has also particularly known that a remarkably high development rate can be displayed when using a silver halide highly containing silver chloride.
For the dye image quality obtained from a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material, it is required to be excellent in color developability, color reproducibility and anti-fading property of long standing.
The present inventors have studied rapid processings by making use of the above-mentioned silver halide highly containing silver chloride, which is suitable for a rapid processing, and combining various types of cyan couplers with each other.
When using the combination of a silver halide highly containing silver chloride and a phenol type cyan coupler having an alkyl group in the 5th position, which has so far widely been used as a cyan coupler, a rapid processing was achieved. However, there is a problem that an anti-dark-fading property was deteriorated; the cyan dye was formed to be excellent in tone and light-fastness, though. In order to improve such anti-dark-fading property, there is available a method of using a phenol type cyan coupler having an alkyl group in the 5th position together with a 2,5-diacylaminophenol type cyan coupler. In this method, color developability, light-fastness and tone are deteriorated; an anti-dark-fading property may be improved, though. In order to improve light-fastness, there is available a method in which a UV absorber is used. And, in order to improve tones, there is available a method in which urea or a sulfamide compound is used, as described in, for example, Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication No. 204041-1984. When using the UV absorber, color developability is further detriorated; the above-mentioned cyan dye light-fastness deteriorated by making combination use of the two kinds of cyan couplers may be improved, though. Also, when using the urea or a sulfamide compound, anti-dark-fading property is deteriorated; the above-mentioned cyan dye tone deteriorated by making combination use of the two kinds of cyan couplers may be improved, though.
As mentioned above, in any conventional technologies, there has not been available any silver halide photographic light-sensitive material suitable for rapid processings and capable of forming high quality cyan dye images.